I seriously wish this gay marriage "issue" would dry up and go away. To the state (or the federal government), a "marriage" is used to track property (or, more specifically, the taxes associated with that property). In some cases, you might think it used to track offspring, but the birth parents of the child really don't matter - the government just wants to know who paid for the kid that year.
If the hang up is over the M-word - then let the church (mosque/synagogue/temple/etc.) have it. In the eyes of the state/federal government, every married couple would be part of a recognized civil union. Who did and who didn't have a proper church wedding would be as much a mystery as it is now. (If you really want to take that thought out for awhile, why stop at two people? Why can't unions be used to identify and manage people that co-habitate? The paperwork would be a bear, for sure, but there are instances, like sibilings living together throughout adulthood or multi-generational homes, where a definition of a civil union beyond the current two-adult flavor might make sense.
What I find concerning, perhaps alarming - certainly offensive, is the elitism that forms the primary anti-gay marriage argument: "I'm married, and I'm doing something that (my personal) God tells me is right. They're doing something that (my personal) God tells me is wrong." Followed by either, "If they say they're married, it will make my marriage worth less," or "They are abnormal and don't deserve to be married (like I am)." Parentheticals are (pretty obviously) my own addition to the general gist of their tirade.
A quick skim of the history of marriage as a social construct shows vacillation surrounding the role of government when dealing with marriages (or not, as the case may be).
It is my opinion that either: a) the federal government should separate the concepts of marriage and civil unions at the federal level, where civil unions then become the focus of interaction with families (tax returns and whatnot); or b) the federal government shuts the hell up and lets the courts do what is right (not right by a particular flavor of God, but right by people and their civil liberties).
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Guess I would say that, while I generally try to stay away from the ad hominem arguments, my feeling here is that the motivation for the anti-gay-marriage thing is a kind of snippy socially-superior attitude, along the lines of "I disapprove of your actions, therefore I'm justified in trying to hassle you as much as possible." Then the arguments put out there are just an attempt to justify that point of view, while masking the original motivation.
There, I said it.
So far as the state being involved at all, I'm still not entirely sure what compelling interest the state has in involving itself in marriage in the first place. Taxes?
And I've certainly heard people make the argument that "'Marriage' means X, and gay people aren't qualified," which is just silly. So like you say, let's use another word then, since it seems that a significant component of this is an idiot semantic argument.
And yeah, since we don't currently have a system set up to deal with civil unions, switching over to such a system will be some hassle. That's no excuse not to do it.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: regardless of their fancy-pants legalistic and sociological arguments, 99% of the people against same-sex marriage are opposed to it because 1)God says it's evil, and 2)gays are icky.
Any conservative who is even half-honest (a pretty sparse crowd these days, it seems) should run screaming from the idea of government sanctioning or not sanctioning a religious ceremony.
I say civil unions for everyone.
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